Well, today has been quite a long, boring day. I didn’t get too much accomplished, but I did give Firefox 3.0 a facelift. Ever since the beta versions of Firefox it has been hell trying to get add-ons. But as of lately, a lot of add-ons are beginning to show up and I’m happy to say that Firefox 3.0 now looks similar to what I had before with Firefox 2.x.x.
Firefox is quite advanced to how Netscape, or Internet Explorer used to be. Now that I’ve seen the new internet explorer it makes me want to vomit. The user interface may be minimal, but it just doesn’t comparable to how Firefox is. I like the approach Firefox has. Once you download and install or have a clean slate Firefox the user interface isn’t really minimal, but it has the basic user interface you’d expect it to have. From there, you can navigate to the addons part of the Firefox website from the browser and start downloading all the addons you want. Internet Explorer in the meantime starts off minimal to the point where you don’t really know where to start customizing, or using their basic interface. I’m sure it’s a lot harder for a basic user to learn how to use just because of the minimalistic view. I had a hard time after using Firefox for so long, and I’m quite the advanced user.
I really like the UI, and how I can customize it the way I want it to be. If I want it to be cluttered, I can just open my All-in-One sidebar, and toggle my Bookmark Bar and have instant clutter. Not only that, but I can also get rid of the clutter by simply hitting the toggle button to get rid of the Bookmark Bar, and hitting the toggle part of the All-in-One Sidebar, and be happy if I’m just surfing around on the internet. If I’m actually serious about the topic I’m looking for, I don’t have to be distracted by the bulky UI options. If I want to blog about something and need internet references, I can open up Scribefire and it opens half way up my page, and I can still read what I’m blogging about. Another thing I like is that I can bookmark with an icon instead of either dragging the website’s favicon into my sidebar, or going into the menu and adding the website to the browser. I do two of the three things accordingly. I either drag the favicon into the bookmark sidebar, or use the icon. It really depends what I’m doing.
By this time I’m sure you’re asking yourself what selection of add-ons I use in my Firefox. Well, here’s a list what I currently use.
- Addblock Plus – Blocks ads to website’s you don’t want to see.
- All-in-One Sidebar – A multiple-listing, customizable sidebar. You can view your bookmarks, history, downloads, add-ons, and so much more.
- ColourfulTabs – When you use or open tabs, you will different different coloured tabs that will display. It helps when you’re going tab-crazy.
- CustomizeGoogle – You can enhance Google searches, and also block ads, get other search engine results, and be more secure with mail, and other such things Google. It’s nice to have.
- DOM Inspector – The add-on is textbook. Not sure what it does, but it’s enabled by default so it must be a must-have.
- Feed Sidebar – Instead of having live bookmarks as an icon, you can use a sidebar to display the live feeds, and give little descriptions much like a feed reader does. It will also give you an option to open it up in the all-in-one sidebar which makes it even more better.
- Flashblock – Blocks un-needed flash ads, or content. Which can be re-enabled to see on a per site basis.
- GoogleEnhancer – Similar to the CustomizeGoogle add-on. I will probably remove this now that I look at it.
- Hyperwords – It makes every work on the internet interactive. You can highlight any piece of text in the browser and do a search on it.
- Menu Editor – Customize application menus. You can not only customize your basic menus, but also your right click menu
- NoScript – Allows JavaScript, Java and other plug-ins to work on trusted websites or domains of your choice.
- Scribefire – Full-featured blog editor that integrates well into Firefox, and where I’m writing this entry at the moment. The user interface is a lot better than any other blog interface I’ve used in linux. Both, BloGTK(Not a firefox add-on) and Scribefire take turns. I can’t seem to pick just one.
- Stumbleupon – Toolbar that will let you browse for selective content based on keywords and topics. It integrates well into Firefox since I can put it onto my bookmark bar and hide my bookmark favicons as well as the bar that holds the favicons and stumbleupon bar.
- Tiny Menu – Replaces the standard menu bar and enables me to have a one minimized menu pop-up. This also works well with the Menu Editor since you can limit the items in the pop-up menu.
- Toolbar Buttons – This add-on adds more toolbar buttons, and is very useful with a minimal user interface.
- Ubuntu Firefox Modifications – Ubuntu Firefox Pack. I haven’t looked at it, but it was preinstalled.
There are a lot of add-ons, but it has enabled me to have an awesome full-futured customized browser with all the add-ons I want. Although, there is one add-on that I really want, and soon enough it will be updated to use on Firefox 3.0. Ubuntu Forums Menu. This enables me to view the forums main menu and context. If you’re searching for a selected topic for a program, this add-on makes it a lot more easier, and helps to bring Ubuntu topics closer to you. This of course will work with the Tiny Menu as it did in Firefox 2.x.x.
Thanks for reading my post, here’s a picture of my browser.
-J
With Clutter
Without Clutter
Posted by Justin 
